EFFECTS OF NOISE CORRELATION AND TIME DELAY ON TRANSIENT PROPERTIES OF A CANCER GROWTH SYSTEM WITH IMMUNIZATION

Abstract

The effects of noise correlation and time delay on the transient properties of a cancer growth system are studied in terms of the mean first-passage time (MFPT), which provides a measure of the mean extinction time of the tumor cell population. The results indicate that the additive and multiplicative noises can induce the noise-enhanced stability (NES) effect. The increasing of the delay time weakens the NES effect in the presence of two noise sources and induces a shift of the maximum of the MFPT towards smaller values of the noise intensities. The increasing of cross-correlation strength between noises can only restrain the NES effect induced by the multiplicative noise and can induce a shift of the peak of the MFPT towards larger values of the noise intensities.